Transcription
Hello guys and gals. Me Mudahar. What's the most important thing on your computer, ladies and gentlemen? Not the homework folder. Not even the operating system that you use, okay? Windows, Mac, or Linux.
No, ladies and gentlemen, it's actually, believe it or not, your actual web browser. Now, how often do you guys change your web browsers? Okay, I would wager once you have something that you really like, you probably stick with it.
Now, ladies and gentlemen, Google Chrome is by far the most used browser. But what if I told you it's being threatened? Ladies and gentlemen, uh, to be fair with you, if you just look at the graph, logically it just keeps evolving. But this measure is not entirely foolproof science. A lot of web browsers that compete with Google literally just use Google Chrome's base, right? Remember, Google Chrome is open-source. You can take the Chromium project and you can stuff it with whatever you want and make your own browser.
So, today I wanted to cover a web browser that apparently is being totally challenged right now. Okay, there is a new browser. There's a new bucko in the market that is absolutely about to step all over Google's shoes. Woo! This is a new AI-free browser by a company known as Perplexity that's here to rival Google Chrome.
Now, you might be like, "Okay, well, why have I not heard about this?" Well, ladies and gentlemen, if you ever look into the world of hardcore internet geeks, this used to be an entire browser that some people were willing to pay at times $200 a month for to use if you bought the Perplexity Max plan. Now, maybe like, "Whoa, who the [ __ ] is paying 200 bucks for a browser?" But that also comes with a whole suite of other AI [ __ ]. Uh, I would assume it's not just the browser. If it is, my god, is it easy to milk AI nerds. But obviously, this is a pretty huge deal, right?
So I was kind of watching this and apparently it's a it's a huge browser that's supposed to change the way you and I interact with the internet. It's an AI browser that I guess does the [ __ ] browsing for you. So you go to Comet browser and it's like the browser that works for you. So immediately when you go to the download page, you can download her for Windows or Mac. Unfortunately, it does not work on my Linux system, which is fine because there are ways to get Windows applications running underneath Linux and it does not involve Wine, okay, all the time. Even though I would love some Wine, but it's a little too early in the day for it.
Now, what I'm going to do is use something known as Windboat, which is an amazing way for you to run almost any Windows application underneath Linux and have it look as if it was natively running. Now, if you want a video tutorial on how to get something like this set up so you can run your things like Photoshop, I [ __ ] you not underneath Linux. I would be more than happy to help you. Let me know in the comments section below. But I am going to put this effort and actually run this tool myself.
So here I got a little virtual machine running. And of course, because it's a VM running in a small little Docker container, I can go to the applications list. And here you can see I've already installed Comet Browser, but I haven't set it up yet. So, since it's free, I'm I'm going to sit down. I'm going to pop my virginity and and blow a new way of looking at the internet together. Is it worth it or is it something that honestly we we probably DIDN'T EVEN NEED? WHOA, it's floating off the screen. Come back here, ladies and gentlemen.
We're going to hit start on Comet and it's going to ask me, "Unlock your personal assistant. Pick up where you left off." Now, if you have a different browser, for instance, Edge or Brave, you can just grab from here. Okay, but I'm going to do it fresh. So, I'm going to make it a virgin system. Make it yours. So, I guess we're going to call it Muda. All right. Just just to make it simple. And I guess we can pick which planet we're on. Well, first off, I do like dark mode. And I'll be honest, I love Neptune as a planet the most. So, we're going to go with Neptune. Make Comet your default. Try it fully risk-free. I guess I guess sure, it's a VM. You do whatever you need to. And of course, uh, improve the product. Sure. I mean, why not send some more information back home?
So, here it is. Uh, Comet has fired up and started. And of course, it's now saying, "Windows. Yes, just make it a default. Just Just do it." So, here it is, ladies and gentlemen. The world's first real AI browser for anybody to grab. Now, first things first, you can sign in with your Perplexity account, but I'm not going to do it. I'm just going to skip that [ __ ] and get right into the meat and potatoes, okay? Because anytime I have to log into browsers, I just don't do it.
So, I guess this is the browser itself. Now, immediately if you're looking at it, ladies and gentlemen, this is very much a Chromium browser. So, the whole thing about fighting Google Chrome, look, we're never going to escape the Chromium web engine, okay? Everyone's just going to really stick with it. Now, of course, I'm somebody that's really interested in privacy, and I would never endorse a product like this that clearly has a lot to do with a company that loves grabbing your information on a day-to-day basis. But of course, you can see that they're private data. They they have auto-suggestions, improvement of Comet, the assistant, blah, blah, blah, block trackers and ads from which you follow the web. So, basic security applied in there. But again, we'll do a little test for it down the road.
So I guess the way that we get things working is obviously in their little like browse tab, you can basically tell the Comet assistant to do, you know, a bunch of things. So, you can tell it to scan my inbox for deadlines, which there ain't no [ __ ] way I'm signing into my email with this, that's for sure. Open LinkedIn, Gmail, and Calendar in tabs and group them as a morning routine. What kind of sick [ __ ] opens up Twitter, Gmail, and these three tools as their morning? That's the worst morning routine to have.
So, I guess one of the ways that you can ask it is like, "Can you make dinner reservations for me? Find me top dinner restaurants. Find me top restaurants in Toronto," and we'll go from there. Damn, it's really throwing me at the Michelin star places. Jesus Christ. You know what? I'm actually down for some some uh, some Spanish style food. Let's go for a Bar Isabel. It's okay. I'm asking it to reserve a place for me. It's like, "Wait a minute. Sign in." No, I do not want to sign in yet. You said this is going to be free. I am not getting trapped into like paying for something here.
So I guess it's now using a reasoning model and actually browsing for me. So if we open it up, you can actually see that it's doing a bit of browsing for me. So it's actually putting in the time. It's trying to find stuff and then of course things are kind of going wrong in its attempt to complete reservations. So one of the first tasks which was reserve a table for me, the AI got as far as to entering details, but it just kept erroring out. So, one of the things that it was built to do and actually just constantly erroring on was not a good sign.
So I figured the next stage to go is maybe making it browse YouTube for me and finding specific clips, which is something that's in its actual example sheet. Let's go there. All right. Anyways, whatever. I just signed in with Perplexity just so I can actually like use it. Built an account and of course, I guess we'll try the assistant. So, the assistant actually tells you a bunch of things that you can do that I guess is supposed to change the way you browse the internet. So, if you ask the browser, right, "Open, go to Spotify and create a playlist with popular electronic music, check the status of my most recent online orders, or open YouTube, find the official NASA moon landing video, and jump to the moment Armstrong says 'one small step for man'." That's a pretty like interesting ask. Okay, so I guess we'll I guess we'll try that. Let's let's try let's try the test.
So, for instance, the actual browser is going to go through this effort. It's going to find the full exact page and then it's going to open that specific page and it's going to take me to that place, which I assume it does by checking the transcript of the video and just guiding you in there. Now, this is where the AI ended up just reasonably thinking and looking at this video and assessing it for just god knows how long. And it took so long at this point that instead of, you know, me trying to find the quote, it was easier for me to go to YouTube search engine, put the quote in, and I could just immediately see the video uh in question. All without needing the AI to try and find the stuff for me. It was it's just insane.
All right. Like the use cases, even the ones that are provided, in my opinion, aren't exactly, you know, functioning. And you're seeing it right here. It it just doesn't seem to be working. And this is what they're comfortable showing to people right now. It's It's just insane. You know, I was supposed to have like this crazy what the [ __ ] moment, but it really feels like for a [ __ ] big top-tier AI browser, it [ __ ] up pretty royally. So, it can't make a dinner reservation, can't even go to a YouTube video to open up a [ __ ] like exact quote at all. Unless it spends like a crazy amount of resources, and still makes that mistake.
So, I guess we can just ask it, uh, "Go to Newgrounds, I guess. Go to a website known as Newgrounds and find me a game called Pico's School." I wonder if it can actually do that. So, all right. Whoa, it opened up, boys. It's reasoning model and it's actually browsing for me. That's crazy. So, it's it's going to the web page. It it it's identified Newgrounds. Okay. And it's it's uh it actually I think it does your like actual um captures for you, which is kind of insane if it can do captures for me. Okay, I will skip everything and just unironically support this browser to no end if it just if it does that.
Okay, so here it is. It did succeed in one task, which was finding the game called Pico School for me, in which you can you can play right now or like find me a flash game called Bush uh called Bush Shootout or something similar. So, I don't remember this game, but I remember playing it like on my channel like probably seven [ __ ] years ago or some [ __ ]. So, I'm going to see if it can identify this and figure it out. And it did actually find me the game. So, it didn't do the agentic search for me, but it did provide me what I needed, which I could have done with any other browser.
"Can you go to bestbuy.com and find a PlayStation 5 and put it in the shopping cart for me?" So, we're going to ask it to do something simple like that, which I guess it's it's okay. So, it's actually opened up the agentic look. So, it fires it up and the and the actual browser will like, "Okay, so it went to the United States." Not exactly what I needed it to do, but again, it Oh, wait. Best Buy wants to know my location. Do not allow. So, okay. So, it's made it all the way to the PlayStation 5 section in the store. And then, of course, it, you know, the thing about it is like everything that it's doing, it's kind of like if you were so lazy you didn't want to browse the web and you just wanted to walk away and like take a [ __ ] or something, you could. I guess this might be the only saving grace for it.
But, I guess it did actually complete like two of the tasks. But, you know, as far as everything is going, I would say, what are we looking at like a like a 30, 40% success rate. It did two tasks well. It it it [ __ ] up like two other tasks. And uh, you know, tried to do the YouTube thing, but it just didn't complete that whatsoever. So, you know, basically at this point, it did actually complete the task and I would say, what, like a minute. And then, of course, if you go to the cart, you can see that yes, it did actually uh put the slim console in. And I guess if I said, "Can you put the disc version of the console in instead, which I guess I should have specified it, but uh, you know, it's going to try and figure this out, right? It's going to try and identify it."
So I guess anytime you see this blue aura, it's like actually reading the browser and then it removes the cart and then it tries to find the actual disc version. Now I guess while one page is doing this sort of thing, I guess you can always open up any other like thing over here. So for instance, I guess the other big thing that these companies want to do is like they want AI to basically figure stuff out for you. So for instance, I have this like infographic show video and I guess one of the big things they want is like, "Hey, can you summarize the video for me?" And what it'll basically do is I believe just open up the transcript over here and do all of this for you. Not to say that you couldn't just do this underneath YouTube as well, because I'm pretty sure they're putting in AI summaries on [ __ ] videos now, which are just again more [ __ ].
But let's go back and check the PlayStation console again and see how far we've gotten here. So, the disc version of the PlayStation console is in your Best Buy cart for $549. Now, of course, this is [ __ ] ladies and gentlemen, because that does not contain the disc version. In fact, it just did the original task without modifying the prompt whatsoever.
So, you might be like, "Okay, but Muda, it's an AI. We expect it to fail." Look, bro, nobody is telling you that you need to have agentic AIs to do every single possible thing imaginable. So, ultimately, you know, this isn't the only business in the game. There's other products like Felu, for instance, which is the world's first agentic browser. Uh, again, I think everyone is trying to do a [ __ ] agentic browser at this point. And, uh, none of it is super duper impressive to me.
You know, I I feel like for a lot of these services, what's really wild is like I've read so much dick sucking stuff from like a lot of these big tech companies where, you know, literally right here, I'll read this quote from you. So, Perplexity's comment is here, and after using it for 48 hours, I'm convinced AI browsers are the future of the internet. So, literally right over here, they bring up the same [ __ ]. It unlocks the internet. If you're like me, you probably have a million things you need to do in a day. From booking vet appointments, sorting, wait, how often are you booking a vet appointment? Hold on a minute. Sorting dinner, ordering prescription medication, and even finding deals to buy new games like the upcoming Donkey Kong Bonanza. Well, I just asked it to try purchasing a specific version of a PlayStation 5, and it [ __ ] up. So, if it's [ __ ] up my PlayStation 5 purchase, there ain't no goddamn way I'm getting the [ __ ] AI to buy my prescription medicine. Okay, that ain't [ __ ] happening. All right. God damn.
So, basically, they asked, I asked Comet to browse Michelin Guide restaurants for my upcoming trip to Copenhagen based on the specific criteria. Check hotel availability for my honeymoon next year in Japan. Bro, are you doing all that in the same same day? Really? Really? While Comet has been handling those tasks, I've been able to devote my entire concentration to work. And you know, much like vibe coding and all that [ __ ], it's like, yeah, you can get the AI to do stuff for you, but then immediately, you know, you have to start correcting all of its mistakes. So, the question has to be asked, just do it. Just do it to begin with, okay? Do your chores to begin with. So you're not burning needless energy, probably spending money in a subscription service if you really enjoy this grift so much, and then you know at the end of the day still fixing up the mistakes that it offers. All right, you probably unironically spend more time than you're actually quote unquote saving.
Now for a lot of these organizations like Perplexity, the reason why they made an AI browser is because the internet's broken. The internet has stifled our curiosity. Knowledge work taught us to have answers, not questions. The clicks and traffic model of the web has done nothing but convert it into digital yellow pages where every path leads to a checkout button. Look, people want a better internet and I don't think a better internet is created or a better internet is found through like using the same technology that's actually in shitifying the internet as we speak.
So yeah, obviously look, this is a big new thing. Agentic use of AI is obviously a big step up from like, you know, just using ChatGPT. Imagine if you could use ChatGPT and also just have ChatGPT like do the whole like browsing the internet software. I mean, how [ __ ] lazy are you getting to the point? Okay, you can't even browse the internet. Like come on, bro. Like stop.
Now, people have talked about the privacy aspect of this and people have looked into their privacy notices and said that obviously, you know, they're grabbing a lot of information. So things like your interaction data, including including browser history information, such as the URLs of pages that you visit, text, images, and other resources from those pages, permissions you have granted to websites, the number of open tabs and windows, your search queries, records of what you download from websites, cookies from websites you, I mean, basically every single [ __ ] thing that you're looking at. Okay, but you do have the option to block Comet from using this information, as well as your browsing history. And if you browse in incognito mode, they don't check for any of this [ __ ].
Now, the thing is ultimately that requires you to trust these companies first and foremost. And I do not trust these companies. Okay? So, if you're somebody who's really like worried about your privacy, look, I think it's insane that you would download a web browser that just openly says, "Look, from the get-go, unless you switch this off, we basically just look and process everything." And why wouldn't they? They're a [ __ ] AI company, okay? Their job is to analyze and watch how you use the internet so they can replicate it in their agentic purpose for other people.
What really just also chaps my ass about this too is how open the CEO is saying that they're just going to track everything that you do just to sell hyper-personalized ads. And here here's here's the quote right here. Right? There's that's kind of one of the reasons we wanted to build a browser is we want to get data even outside the app. So their actual page or the Perplexity app to better understand you because some of the prompts that people do in these AIs is purely work-related. It's not like that's personal. However, on the other hand, what are things you're buying? Which hotels are you going to? Which restaurants are you going to? What are you spending time with? And the thing is, yeah, it's true that they're probably using this to hypersp specify ads to you. And I again, that's still creepy to me. And the thing is, I I just don't know how people feel comfortable sharing this level of personable information with the browser that they use.
Generally speaking, if I'm using a browser, I consider it to be a program that I use to access an HTML document on the web. I don't want to sit next to a big tech company in Silicon Valley that just looks through what I do and like scans everything that it seems to do. Even though you could technically turn these concepts and it features off, do you trust these AI companies to do that? I don't. And that's the thing. It's just [ __ ] creepy, dude.
And of course, if you might be wondering, okay, why not just stick to Google Chrome or something? Look, I'm going to be real with you. I think almost every single web browser now is switching to some level of AI. Look, a couple weeks ago, I saw that Microsoft was like, "Wait, you know, the future of using Windows is going to be with agents instead of using it like with your mouse and keyboard." This is like archaic [ __ ]. And I thought this was pretty much peak good enough, you know, just using a keyboard and mouse. Never in a million years did I ever want to sit down and like write in prompts to my operating system for it to do things for me that I pretty much have to fix down the road because an AI just cannot be trusted to do any I would say complicated task.
Okay, but again, when they talk about like Chrome, for instance, they wanted to build a browser that was faster, more secure, stable, and open. And of course, how do you like [ __ ] up Chrome even more? Well, you just start infesting it with all the AI [ __ ] you can imagine. So basically stuff Gemini, stuff everything into the system so that you can make your browser more bloated, which really the only job of a browser should just be to browse websites, watch videos, and generally the lighter these things can be is what I want.
And look, even my favorite browser is not immune from this [ __ ] either. I love Brave, but Brave was probably one of the first browsers to start infesting itself with [ __ ] like artificial intelligence. It's not uncommon for me to like look at the side and see, holy [ __ ], I can get this to I can use a bunch of AIs to to to help me browse the internet. "Can you go to Newgrounds and find me a game called Pico School?" "I can't browse the internet or search stuff. However, you can search for Pico School directly on Newgrounds by visiting their site." Oh, thank you for providing me that brilliant stuff. Now, if it was agentic, I'm sure it might be able to somehow connect into my system and do things for me, but uh, is that really what the future requires? Do you really need to have all these AIs in your life for you to be browsing through? Come on now.
So I will say according to the EFF, it does appear that like the actual uh browser Perplexity does have strong protection against things like web tracking. That's not to say that Brave browser doesn't also have this too, but with Brave, you also do have a randomized fingerprint, which I think is pretty important. Browsers like Perplexity's Comet are actually unique. So, they're still identifiable. So, just know that when you're actually walking into this that you're not totally unique as opposed to other browsers. And look, at the end of the day, all right, Brave alongside Librewolf, alongside Mulvad kind of remains one of the best options. That is to say, a lot of those agentic AI-based browsers aren't anywhere near here. But again, for these AI browsers to function, they have more of a need to look through your personal information than the other standard stuff out there.
Look, at the end of the day, ladies and gentlemen, I think the experience for me has not been a mind-blowing moment. If anything, I I wanted to show you a realistic look. There are some cool things like, yeah, you can go to a flash game website and find a specific game for me, which, you know, the amount of time it took to do even that, I could have easily done myself. Uh, I think for it to try to find a specific quote in a YouTube video would have been cool if it succeeded, but it ended up taking several minutes and I frankly could have found that information long before the AI would have completed.
Now, this is all done under the free tier, so I'm pretty sure that maybe it might be better if I paid money every month. But dog, with the amount of monthly subscriptions that exist, there is no [ __ ] way in hell you are going to catch me paying monthly to consider having a better browser experience. So, yeah, ladies and gentlemen, AI browsers, in my opinion, they ain't [ __ ] worth the hype, okay? Just stick with something like Brave if you need AI that bad. Okay? All right? You know, get a local model or [ __ ], I don't know, use something like Gemini on a different tab. You do not need it infested so deep into your browser that this is how you check the internet in the future.
Again, I look, the more I look at this AI [ __ ], the more I personally see it as nothing more than an insane [ __ ] bubble. And uh, I'm just waiting for this bubble to [ __ ] pop so I can I I I can see the fireworks. That said, ladies and gentlemen, I am